Left or Right?
Look at the image of the dancer above. Do you see her turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?
If she is turning clockwise, you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa. The table below summarizes the functions of the left and right sides of the brain:
| LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS | RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS |
| uses logic | uses feeling |
| detail oriented | “big picture” oriented |
| facts rule | imagination rules |
| words and language | symbols and images |
| present and past | present and future |
| math and science | philosophy & religion |
| can comprehend | can “get it” (i.e. meaning) |
| knowing | believes |
| acknowledges | appreciates |
| order/pattern perception | spatial perception |
| knows object name | knows object function |
| reality based | fantasy based |
| forms strategies | presents possibilities |
| practical | impetuous |
I (like most people apparently) initially saw the dancer turning anti-clockwise. What I found fascinating, though, is that it is possible to change the direction of the dancer by focusing on her (I normally focus on her ankle). This took me approximately 2 minutes the first time.
Since receiving this test a few weeks back, I have been experimenting with it in relation to my blog writing. The right brain is necessary for creativity and originality, and therefore I would hope it is a part of my writing process. Recently I have been meditating in the morning, and what I have found is that when I do this test right after I will be using my right brain. So I have tried to use this time to develop ideas for articles, rather than take care of tasks such as processing emails and comments.
Note: this was originally sent to me via email, but the credit for the test seems to belong to The Daily Telegraph.
37 Comments
November 16th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
I see her turning clockwise, and even after five minutes of focusing on her just cannot get her to turn the other way. There’s something almost meditative/trance-inducing in itself about just watching her though, and I quite liked the effect. And I *will* get her to turn anti-clockwise eventually
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November 16th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
I see the dancer turning clock-wise, no matter how hard I focus I only see it that way
I hope my left part of the brain wakes up soon since I have a mathemathical analysis test soon
Nice experiment!
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November 16th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
@Santiago: Me too!!
Maybe because I am a language student or I just read too much self help books >.<
I am going to bookmark this and try it again some other day, thanks for mentioning this experiment!
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November 16th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I saw this a while back, as well, but it ALWAYS turns clockwise for me… I’ve tried, and I can’t see it the other way.
The funny thing is that when I was younger, I took a test on the computer that was supposed to tell you if you are left brain dominant or right brain dominant. This test resulted in negative scores for left brain and positive scores for right brain. What was funny about it? I broke the test software, because I scored a 0… exactly in the middle.
I wonder if my physical brain structure is different, or if it’s something else (spirit/personality/upbringing/whatever)?
I know this is going to be long this way, but here’s the ones that fit me from left brain (in the lists above):
uses logic
words and language
order/pattern perception
reality based
forms strategies (this one is sort of balanced, but I lean left brain)
practical
And here’s from the right:
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules (only slightly higher right brain on this one)
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
knows object function
Ironically, even though I didn’t intend it, it came out 5 definitely and one sort of on each side… I’m split down the middle (or perhaps joined down the middle).
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November 16th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
no way she is turning counterclockwise…
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November 16th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
All I have to do is looking at her ankles to get her to turn directions (she starts clockwise for me). Not a problem seeing her change directions from the first time I saw her.
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November 16th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
She spins clockwise for me. When I concentrate on the ankles, then scroll down some so she is out of view and only look at the shadow below her ankles. Then back to body where she is spinning counter clockwise.
I could not reverse her to spin to clockwise, so I tried scrolling down so she was out of view. I thought of an inspiring short speech I had heard, imagined her spinning clockwise, scrolled up, and BAM! She was spinning clockwise again. I tested this several times, at least for me it works perfectly. What a cool blog.
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November 17th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Hi Peter,
Actually, to tell you the truth, what I noticed first is that she’s dancing naked and that it must be pretty cold wherever she’s dancing and she’s got some cool levitation powers
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November 17th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
There is no way to get here to spin anti-clockwise. It has to do with the fact that she is chiral and you can plainly tell the direction of her spin based on the traits that distinguish front from back, left from right. Her right leg is extended toward the front and moves from (her) left to right side while her ponytail is extended rear and moves from (her) right to left. If neither leg were extended, or there was no feature to distinguish back from front, it would be possible to see something different, but I don’t buy the “If you look long enough it will change direction”
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November 17th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
What if she turns clockwise one time you come to the page and counter-clockwise the next time? She even switched directions on me last time I was here.
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November 17th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
She’s not moving for me… what does that mean??
jk… I mostly see her turn clockwise but can make her turn the other way as well.
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November 17th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I was surprised that I saw her going clockwise because I would have expected myself to be more left brained. I showed it to my husband and he saw it going anti clockwise, but could easily change the direction. After a long time I managed to get her to change direction, by concentrating on her ankles, but I have to admit she wants to be going clockwise, so I will have to accept that I am right brained.
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November 17th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I saw both and have both traights.
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November 18th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I saw this a couple of months ago and can still only see her go anti clockwise!
I found this link a really interesting next step. It didn’t make everything so cut and dry…you can and do have elements of both. http://www.wherecreativitygoes.....b_test.htm
My results were 55% left brain and 45% right brain.
although i got 0% reality based processing for the left brain - apparently this opens the door to creativity…
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November 18th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
If you see her spinning clockwise, it’s her right leg that is extended; if you see her spinning counterclockwise, it’s her LEFT leg that is extended. To say “she’s chiral and is ‘plainly anything‘” is the equivalent of seeing the old optical illusion of “is it a goblet or two faces staring at each other” and say “the goblet is symmetrical and its sides are clearly visible… it’s plainly a goblet“.
For those who are very analytical (I am, and I first saw clockwise -so I don’t trust this “test”- , and said “No way she’s doing anything else but spinning clockwise, this is BS”)… maybe give this a try: focus down around her knees and think of the one leg as oscillating back and forth in a sine wave pattern. After about 30 seconds of thinking of a side-to-side oscillation and not of a circular motion (it is 2D, after all, and it’s a black blob flowing left and right, not a chick spinning around… our mind does that), suddenly what I had seen as the right leg coming around front in the clockwise circle was instead the LEFT leg going around the back in a counterclockwise circle as the leg crosses the centerline at the same point either way.
After that, you can almost switch her direction at will.
Tristan - alas, I too spent the first few seconds pondering why anyone would put erect nipples on a computer-generated shadow figure.
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November 18th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Initially I saw her turning clockwise, but after focusing on the shadow, it flipped to counter-clockwise. It took me a little bit to switch back to clockwise again. This is pretty interesting. I wonder if training your mind to flip it can build the connection between the left and right brain. I usually try to do this when looking at 2-d cube drawings that have 2 overlapped squares connected in the corners by 3 diagonal lines.
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November 18th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Thanks for the comments everyone. My computer has been under attack the past 2 days from spyware/ malware/ etc so I have been a bit slow to respond…. I think everything is ok now though…… *fingers crossed*
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November 19th, 2007 at 3:02 am
Naaaaah…….I think the image changes about every 60-90 seconds clockwise to counterclockwise and back again. I see her spinning both ways and at regular intervals. I don’t buy that this is right or left brain action; I think the image is changing rotation on a timer. My opinion.
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November 19th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Woow.. Peter, this is cool! But for the life of me, and I’ve been staring at this for awhile now, can’t grasp how she can turn counter clock wise.
Guess I’m a right brainer. I’ll try again after doing some left-brainer tasks. 
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November 19th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
For those of you trying to get it to spin “anti-clockwise” try doing mental math getting gradually harder. like… 3+3=6, 6+6=12, 12+12=24………… I naturally see her spinning clockwise, but the mental math trick worked to flip the spin for me.
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November 22nd, 2007 at 2:50 pm
It only turns clockwise for me. I can’t see it the other way, no matter what I do (except maybe have a few drinks, then it would become blurry)
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November 23rd, 2007 at 12:23 am
[…] I’ve found loads of cool blogs to waste even more of my time reading. I came across this on I will change your life it is totally fascinating. Apparantly, by looking at the image of the dancer turning, you can tell […]
December 5th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
she spins both ways, randomly switches when i watch her, depends how far away i am….. is that weird?
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December 6th, 2007 at 8:40 am
awesome ….. at first i definitely saw her move clock wise …. then as i read on i tried to make her turn the other way … i achieved that by focussing on her ancles and shadow or by just closing my eyes for a moment and wanting to make her move in my desired direction .. it worked … she seemd jinxed
…. but what i found truely amazing is that when i concentrated on her legs for about a minute or two … i can see her swing and not rotate … so she swings from left to right and right to left … and for each swing she chages her leg … her right leg is up when she moves to the left and her left leg is up when she moves to the right … truely amazing … cant wait to share this one with my genius boyfriend 
…
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December 7th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
This is fascinating. I doubted she rotated anti clockwise at first but I can found I can flip her. However my brain prefers her going clockwise.
I find if I look to the left and just concentrate out of the corner of my eye she will change direction. Try looking to the right if she is going anti clockwise to start with.
My son and I both saw her spinning in opposite directions at the same time otherwise I might have been dubious.
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December 26th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Amazing!! At first, she was turning counter clockwise and I thought there was no way she was moving other way round, but she did change her direction — now I have see it happen several times and still cannot figure how it happens. You mentioned to focus on her ankles, so I scrolled the screen to the point I can only see her feet, and I still cannot figure what happens.
Akemi
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January 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Ha! Wonderful. She was originally turning clockwise for me but it only took 10 or 15 seconds of concentrating to make her turn around. For those of you who can’t get her to turn try this:
1) If she is originally turning clockwise think of a random three digit number (nothing round) and a random single digit number, divide one into the other. Or start doing simple math problems that you don’t immediately know the answers to. She will turn. If you start doing a sing-song poem (2 and 2 are 4, 4 and 4 are 8, 8 and 8 are 16…) then you are still using the right side of your brain and it won’t work.
2)If she is originally turning counter-clockwise then think of your favorite character in a book (one that hasn’t been made into a movie) try to imagine what they look like. For me even trying to invent a middle name of someone whose middle name I didn’t know or trying to invent an address for an acquaintance triggered the right side of my brain.
Let me know (zgood@hillsdale.edu) if that works for you. I ended up having a lot of fun just turning her back and forth at will.
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February 10th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
[…] ones where I share information that is commonly available, can turn out to be the most popular (see Left or Right?, What is Success? and The Paradoxical Commandments to see exactly what I […]
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